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As the first high-end brand of Great Wall, the sales performance of "Wei Brand" is gradually declining recently. Data show that Great Wall Wei sold only 2427 new cars in October, a year-on-year drop of 58.54%. From January to October, sales were 32891, down 21.71% from a year earlier. Both October sales performance and the first October sales performance so far are the biggest declines of Great Wall brands.

A group of road test spy photos of the first Wei brand car were exposed online today, with the interior of the new car codenamed "C03". Judging from the spy photos of the road test, the new car is a hatchback sedan with a retro design and is expected to be officially released in the first half of 2023.

At present, the new car body is still covered with heavy camouflage materials, I do not know the details of the changes, but can clearly see the overall outline of the new car. According to the comprehensive patent map and the espionage photos of this exposure, the new car as a whole adopts a retro style, the forward gas grille and the headlamp group form an integrated style, and the interior of the grille is adjusted from the honeycomb of the patent map to a straight waterfall grill. the headlamp shape with double circular design on both sides looks more recognizable. On the side of the body, the new car looks very slender, with straight A-pillar and D-column design, and hidden doorknobs are expected to be used in the future. In the rear part, the shape of the new car is more square, and the taillight group of double circular design is also adopted, which echoes with the front face, and the exhaust layout is equipped with four-sided exhaust pipes.

Road test spy photo

Patent map

Interior part, before the interior patent map has also been exposed. The layout of the interior of the new car is relatively simple, and the acoustics of the dashboard and door bezel all use circular design elements, which is quite retro. In terms of power, there is no relevant information at present, but from the patent map, the tail on the left and right sides of the body has a similar "refueling port" design, and it is expected that the new car will be equipped with a hybrid system, including DHT hybrid and DHT-PHEV plug-in hybrid system.

"Wei Pai" was founded in 2016, the brand name "WEY", the Chinese name "Wei Pai", and later changed its name to "Wei Pai". At the beginning of its establishment, "WEY" products launched two SUV models named after "VV+ number", VV7 and VV5. Data show that in less than half a year, the monthly sales of both models have exceeded 10,000, with sales reaching 86000 in 2017. In August 2018, VV6 was officially launched, and the product camp was further enriched, and the annual sales of that year further jumped to 139000 vehicles. However, this glorious moment did not last long. "Wei Brand" sales began to decline in 2019, with annual sales falling 28.28% year-on-year to 100000 vehicles and 21.53% to 78500 vehicles in 2020. Sales of all models declined.

In 2021, Wei Brand began to adjust its strategy and define the brand positioning of the "new generation of smart cars". At the same time, it introduced coffee intelligent platform and intelligent hybrid DHT scheme, and launched a number of models such as Mocha, Macchiato and latte. According to the official website, Wei Brand's models currently on sale include Mocha / Mocha DHT, Macchiato DHT/ Macchiato DHT-PHEV and latte DHT/ latte DHT-PHEV. The overall model is mainly named "Coffee", while the VV series model has been discontinued.

However, consumers of the new model named after coffee are not buying it, and sales of WEY are also sluggish, with cumulative sales of 58000 vehicles in 2021, down 25.65% from a year earlier, making it the only brand under Great Wall to decline. Sales of "Wei Brand" were even worse in 2022, with only 32891 vehicles in the first October, a sharp drop of 21.71 per cent year-on-year. According to the plan, from 2021 to 2023, the WEY brand will launch 16 new models, including cars, MPV, etc., while the new platform and technology will extend the price range of WEY from 150000-200000 yuan to 150000-300000 yuan. So far, new models exposed by Wei Brand include Wei Brand Dream fulfillment and Wei 80.

Before that, Wei Brand realized Dream has been officially unveiled at the Chengdu Auto Show. The new car adopts the design style of a vintage car. In terms of power, it is equipped with a 1.5T oil-electric hybrid system of the same model as the latte DHT. The comprehensive power of the system is 181kW, the peak torque can reach 532Nm, and the transmission system matches the two-gear DHT hybrid transmission. As for the new medium and large SUV "Wei 80" has also appeared in the declaration catalogue, but not long after the exposure of the new car due to the unique front face shape caused great attention of netizens, then, Wei Brand official made the decision to "invite netizens to innovate the car", it is expected that the appearance and naming of the new car will change.

In terms of the current market environment, it is difficult for Wei Brand to rely on coffee-based models to boost sales, and whether the new models can get consumer support after the launch depends on the follow-up performance of the new cars.

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